


It's Not The First Time We've Had This Problem

by Trojie



Category: Merlin (BBC), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Humour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-06
Updated: 2010-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-10 23:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>King Arthur and his favourite manservant Merlin seek the grail at the Castle Anthrax.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not The First Time We've Had This Problem

**Author's Note:**

> Silliness. Dialogue stolen blatantly from _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. Inspired by Woldy.

Merlin originally thought God's idea of a quest for the Holy Grail was brilliant. An excuse to get Arthur alone. The population of the first castle, however, is not being particularly helpful. He stands a little behind Arthur and glares at the beautiful and nubile woman, Zoot, who appears to speak for them all, and wishes he could make her shut up.

'... We are but eight-score young blondes and brunettes, all between sixteen and nineteen and a half, cut off in this castle with no-one to protect us. Oh, it is a lonely life, bathing, dressing, undressing, making exciting underwear. We are just not used to handsome knights-'

'Hang on,' Merlin feels it incumbent upon him to interrupt here. 'I'm not a knight.'

'-handsome knights and their slender, fey manservants with nibble-able ears-'

'Wait, what did you say about no-one to protect you?' Arthur asks suddenly.

'Oh, we are all alone, so very starved for the company of menfolk-'

'But what happens if you're beseiged?'

'Oh sir,' Zoot giggles, 'I'm sure we should just roll over and surrender to the breach of our stronghold.'

'Right,' says Arthur with a steely glint in his eye.

That first night, they try very hard to get both Arthur and Merlin into their beds, and are very disappointed when Arthur insists that he and his manservant share a room (Merlin doesn't complain).

Two days later Arthur has the young ladies of Castle Anthrax drilling with pike, longbow and quarterstaff quite competently, and only then does he decide to broach the subject of their _actual_ quest. Merlin, who's getting tired of the diet of soft fruit, whipped cream and spreadable chocolate products (apparently migratory swallows can carry cacao pods on creepers just as successfully as they can carry coconuts, and with much less strain to their dorsal guiding feathers), is all in favour of this. Also he would rather like to extract Arthur from this atmosphere of perfume and exciting underwear before he starts getting ideas.

'Alright, where is it?' Arthur says exasperatedly after four hours of traipsing around Castle Anthrax. There have been several incidents involving doors that REALLY should have been locked and weren't. Arthur's blush is a fine and magnificently Pendragon red, which amuses Merlin greatly.

He still needs to master the art of knocking though.

'Hello!'

'Hello!'

'Hello!'

There are a _lot_ of girls behind that door, and not a lot of clothing.

'Zoot!' Arthur exclaims, scandalised.

'No, I am Zoot's identical twin sister, Dingo,' the blonde woman at the centre of the room says, as if this is a) a perfectly normal name (and Merlin puts aside the fact that he knows people called Zwentibold and Galahad and Not-Appearing-In-This-Fic) and b) something that happens a lot.

It probably does, actually.

'Well, we'd better be moving along-' Arthur begins, keeping his eyes fixed at a point somewhere over Dingo's left shoulder.

'Where are you going?' Dingo asks, making it quite clear that she'd rather like Arthur to stay.

'I seek the Grail,' Arthur says exasperatedly. 'I saw it when we were riding in.'

'Oh no! Bad, _bad_ Zoot!' Dingo groans.

'What?' asks Arthur bewilderedly.

'She has been setting alight to our beacon, which I've just remembered is Grail-shaped. It's not the first time we've had this problem.'

'Often lure knights here, do you?' Merlin asks sourly under his breath. Dingo and her varletesses have far too much in the way of ... tracts of land ... and far too little in the way of clothing to suit him. King Arthur does not need all these distractions from his, uh ... quest. Yes. His very important quest. Which Merlin is helping him with.

'It's not the real Grail?' Arthur asks, slightly incredulously and probably more to the point.

Dingo is more interested in bemoaning her sister's sins, it seems, than answering questions. 'Oh wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She is a bad person and must pay the penalty!-'

She would evidently go on in this vein but Arthur waves a hand at her peremptorily. 'Yes, yes, she's a terrible person. It's not the real Grail. Blah blah. Get _on_ with it, for Heaven's sake.'

Dingo pouts momentarily, but does indeed get on with it. 'Here in Castle Anthrax, we have but one penalty for setting alight the Grail-shaped beacon. You must tie her down on a bed and spank her!'

'A spanking! A spanking!' cry the assembled medieval maidens with joy in their voices. Merlin would cheerfully like to strangle them all.

'And after you have spanked her, you may deal with her as you like, and then ... spank me,' Dingo continues, looking like all her Christmasses have come at once.

All the girls verbally jump in line. Arthur looks set to have a sore hand tonight.

'And then after the spanking, the oral sex!' Dingo proclaims in the kind of voice one usually reserves for 'Hey everyone, there's real bacon in the gruel tonight!'

'Well, I suppose-' Arthur begins

'A spanking! A spanking!' the girls are still chanting gleefully, with the odd cry of 'O, spank me, good King Arthur,' and suchlike thrown in.

'No, spank _me_,' Merlin says loudly, without quite realising it.

'What?' Arthur says.

'What?' chorus Dingo and the girls.

Merlin blushes furiously. 'Uh. I mean. I will chivalrously undergo the punishment instead of Zoot?' He coughs. 'We can probably throw in the oral sex bit too if you like ...'

Arthur is starting to look _very_ interested, when suddenly Lancelot and Leon burst in.

'King Arthur! Merlin! You are in grave peril!' Leon announces while Lancelot bravely waves his sword around.

'No we're not,' Arthur says.

'No they're not,' Dingo and the girls cry in desperate unison.

'Silence, foul temptresses! Come on, we'll cover your escape,' Lancelot cries, trying to drag Arthur and Merlin out.

'No, look, I can tackle this lot single-handed,' Arthur says, trying to disentangle himself. 'Merlin included.'

'Yes, let him tackle us single-handed!'

'Yes, let him tackle me single-handed,' Merlin mutters, _sotto voce_ along with the girls.

'Honestly, I can handle them easily!' Arthur says, grabbing the doorframe with both hands in order to try and resist the fact that two brawny knights are trying to drag him bodily through it.

'Yes, let him handle us easily!' Dingo, Merlin and the girls plead. Merlin feels like he's joined a Greek chorus.

'No, come _on_,' says Leon, attempting to haul Arthur over his shoulder.

'I can defeat them! There's only a hundred and fifty-one of them!'

'Yes, he'll beat us easily! We haven't a chance!'

There's muffled and disappointed swearing from behind the door when Lancelot and Leon finally manage to shut it behind their rescue attempt. Merlin knows how the ladies of Castle Anthrax feel.

'We were in the nick of time, you were in great peril,' Lancelot says as they hurry off into the woods.

'I don't think we were,' says Arthur, quite reasonably for a man dragged away from an orgy of spanking.

'You were in terrible peril,' Leon retorts earnestly.

'Let us go back and face the peril. It'll be no trouble for me, and good experience for Merlin,' Arthur says, trying to turn back.

'No, it's too perilous!'

'It's my duty as King to face as much peril as possible! And Merlin's my manservant, he's supposed to face peril at my side.'

'No, we've got to find the Holy Grail. Come on!' Lancelot is nothing if not stubborn.

'Come on, just let us have a little bit of peril?'

'No, it's unhealthy!'

Fortunately for both Arthur and Merlin, Lancelot and Leon are easily distracted by the arrival of a desperate message via arrow, informing them of a princess trapped in a tower and forced to marry against her will. Lancelot's idiom will not allow him to ignore such a missive, and Leon goes with him, at Arthur's insistence.

Merlin builds a fire, and they settle down for the night.

'Now, about that spanking ...' Arthur begins, and Merlin grins.


End file.
